Idle Dreams
by alstair
Summary: Oneshot. Was loving you a sin? An idle dream? Warning: Character death.


**Title: Idle Dreams**

Pairing: Ichigo x Ishida Uryuu

author: alstair

**I.**

_**1.0 Gravity**_

_In retrospect it was probably then that everything began to unwind, to fall apart. It was probably then that this unstoppable freefall into chaos began--but all I saw was sunshine and roses. I felt so blessed to have you with me, here by my side. It was but the calm before the storm. _

_**2.0 Anti-gravity**_

I wanted you to live. I wanted you to live so much that I was willing to give you up, willing to endure each night cold without your warmth by my side, willing to face each day that is now but an empty shadow without your shy smiles. But as I look at you now I realize the depth to which I have wounded you. The hardness in your eyes, the way you stiffen imperceptibly each time our fingers collide, and the way you try to hide the tremble in your voice, trying to make me believe that all is well when it is clearly not.

Yet even now, my only prayer is that you live--for the both of us--now when I cannot.

_**3.0 Repulsion**_

_I should have probably realized that you were not a homosexual, that despite your protestations of love and affection deep down I was this aberration on your otherwise unblemished life. How could I not be? You who were loved by a faultless woman while here I was, a _man_ who refused to acknowledge you as anything but my rival lest the confusion in my own heart became too self-evident._

_**4.0 Attraction**_

You always looked at me with those sharp eyes of yours. The way you looked always made me feel as though you could see right through me into the depths of my being. And I was afraid. I was afraid that you'd realize why I always insisted that you join me at my meals, even when the others resented your unshakable mask of calm indifference and superiority. I was afraid that you'd understand why I would stand in the park across your apartment underneath the driving rain.

_**5.0 Action**_

_That night we became one I thought to myself that there was no greater happiness. That night you left me at the foot of my stairs, a hand holding my shoe because I'd gotten blisters on my feet from running too hard, I had cursed you in the darkness. And I broke. I had promised myself never to cry again yet here I was crying my heart out for a man I'd truly, honestly, and deeply loved._

_**6.0 Counter-action**_

Was it a sin to love you? I want to desperately say no. But what else am I to think when each time I bask in your love I feel the stirrings of that darkness within me reach out. What else am I to think when each time we kiss there is this bitter aftertaste I cannot hide, nor forget.

_**7.0 Extrapolation**_

_I could not, in the end, bear to stay. Here where everything about me is imprinted with memories of you I cannot find relief. Everything was a reminder of a dreamtime that perhaps from the start was doomed to fade. Like morning dew, doomed to dissolve into the nothing that it really is. I have always believed myself to be rational. But with you, despite my protestations, I could never be. You once in loving me killed the person that I was. Now you've killed the man who cannot be anything but in love with you._

_**8.0 Interpolation**_

I could not stay. I could not pretend to myself anymore that the shadows I saw creeping closer day by day did not exist. I could not pretend any longer that the yawning darkness that threatened to engulf me and in the process kill me would not do the same to you. I wanted to preserve the happiness that we'd managed to build. I refused to taint what I wanted to regard as nothing but pure. You. Us. Even if for a little while.

**II.**

The man touched my shoulder. It was not harsh and certainly not rough but I felt it to be so. And like a puppet whose strings had suddenly been cut my knees fell apart and sank into the ground still soft from the evening's rain. Rain. I thought it was apt. The first time had been during the rains. Now that it was time to finally say goodbye the sky had once more seen fit to cry for you. For us.

Except you weren't really gone.

But that made it all the more painful. Had you seen this comming? Was that why you'd decided to let me go? I do not anymore know. Did I hate you for what you did? Yes. No doubt about it. And even now that hate still remains in my heart, unrelenting in the wounds your words have carved into my being. Except I cannot forget those days of peace. Even if loving you had been an idle dream from the start, I loved...and still love...you.

And that simply made this man's...and by extension...your request all the more unbearable.

To end it all.

To kill you.

"Ishida...you must kill Kurosaki. It is the only way. Now while the being that he is now is still incomplete. Now while he still has a tenuous hold on his humanity."

And I imagined I saw the faintest of smiles on your lips before you dissolved into the autumn wind.


End file.
